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"419" Scam – Advance Fee / Fake Lottery Scam

The so-called "419" scam is a type of fraud dominated by criminals from Nigeria and other countries in Africa. Victims of the scam are promised a large amount of money, such as a lottery prize, inheritance, money sitting in some bank account, etc.

Victims never receive this non-existent fortune but are tricked into sending their money to the criminals, who remain anonymous. They hide their real identity and location by using fake names and fake postal addresses as well as communicating via anonymous free email accounts and mobile phones.

Keep in mind that scammers DO NOT use their real names when defrauding people.
The criminals either abuse names of real people or companies or invent names or addresses.
Any real people or companies mentioned below have NO CONNECTION to the scammers!

Read more about such scams here or in our 419 FAQ. Use the Scam-O-Matic to verify suspect emails.

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Fraud email example:

From: hzolani@sify.com
Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2005 04:16:28 +0200
Subject: FROM HARRY

FROM: MR. HARRISON ZOLANI

DIRECTOR, DELIVERY/OPERATIONS


RE: TRANSFER OF OVER US$15M FOR INVESTMENT.

I am Mr. Harrison Zolani, the Director of Delivery/Operations in a security company here in South Africa. Our firm is a security company of high repute with years of outstanding service to the people of Africa especially top government officials and military leaders here in Africa. I have resolved to contact you through this medium based on business proposal that will be of mutual benefit to both of us. I have not discussed this transaction with anybody because it is of top secret.

To be explicit and straight to the point, Sometime late 1999, a reputable client of ours deposited a consignment in our company's vault for safe keeping. And since then our client has failed to come forward to claim his consignment which has accumulated a considerable amount of money in demurrage. Consequently, in our bid to contact this client to redeem the demurrage which his consignment had accumulated we discovered that our client was MR MORRIS THOMPSON a prominent businessman in the United States of America and a major foreign contractor to South African government, who died in a plane crash early 2000.You can view the websits below for more information.

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/02/01/alaska.airlines.list/
More details about the deceased himself, you can check on
(http://www.nativefederation.org/history/people/mThompson.html)

Since the death of our client MR MORRIS THOMPSON, none of his benefactors has come forward to claim the consignment with us, which means that none of his relatives or aids had any knowledge of this consignment.
Hence out of curiosity I secretly scanned the box that our client deposited in our vault. And to my surprise I discovered that the metal box that were registered as treasures by our client actually contained a considerable amount of money in United States Dollars estimated to be over US$9.5million US Dollar.

Since this development I have been nursing plans secretly to solicit for a foreign partner who will stand as the beneficiary of the deposit in our company's custody. I now request your noble assistance in retrieving the consignment funds from the security company for onward transfer of the funds out of South Africa to your country for immediate investment under your trustee.

I have also decided that you will generously be entitled to 25% of the total amount. Upon my receipt of your reply confirming your willingness to assist me with this transaction, I will immediately arrange and transfer all the rights of ownership of this consignment to your name to facilitate your easy clearance and transfer of the complete funds to your country for onwards investment. This transaction is 100% risk free. Please maintain absolute confidentiality on this matter. If interested, furnish me with your contact telephone number to enable us speak further on this transaction

I await your most prompt response.

Yours faithfully.

Mr .Harry Zolani
Email: hzolani@sify.com

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